Six months ago, a taxi I was riding in was hit
by a truck. I was fortunate not to have been
killed, of course, but I didn’t escape without
any injury. I suffered a relatively serious concussion
-- I lost consciousness, and was hospitalized
for a while as a result.
I am only experiencing one lingering effect of
the accident: memory loss. Not that I had
the greatest memory before -- everyone forgets
where the keys are, or occasionally wonders why
they’ve gone to the refrigerator, and I was no
better. But since the accident, things are clearly
different. I forget conversations that
happened only recently, utterly forget important tasks to
take care of, and have generally lost the ability
to recall facts, names, and dates unless I devote
myself to memorizing them. I would give
specific, recent examples -- but I forget.
Obviously, the short-term memory loss (and it
is only short-term memory that has been
affected; I remember past events as well, or
as poorly, as I did before) has been an emotionally
difficult obstacle for me to overcome.
It clearly is not as painful as what many other people have
to endure every day. But we all know that
comparing our suffering against an absolute scale of
pain is not how the human mind works: we focus
on our own pleasures and pains, and forget
that, relative to most people in the world, we
are unbelievably rich and healthy; or that,
conversely, the various pleasures that give our
lives joy may be comfortable crutches, diverting
us from deeper meaning. We are what our
circumstances allow us to understand.
So my initial response to losing my memory was
to rue what I had lost, to become angry
and frustrated each of the three times I had
to return to my apartment to gather things I’d
forgotten to take with me, to cry when I utterly
forgot appointments – for example, to call
someone back when I’d just spoken with them.
What I’ve found, however, is that my loss of memory
has brought about a number of very
positive changes in the way that I live.
First and foremost, I no longer expect any memory,
continuity, or reliability from myself.
I’ve had to reduce that expectation. And as a result, I
forgive much more. Of course I still get
upset when I forget to go to the drug store for four days
in a row. But usually, I set a lower standard.
I expect for fallibility -- more humanity -- out of
myself, and no longer believe that I can ‘accomplish
anything if I set my mind to it,’ a
preposterous all-American lie. If
it’s not written on a to-do list -- my life is now written on to-do
lists -- I cannot be upset when it doesn’t get
done.
Same with questions other people ask me, or requests
that are put to me in my personal or
professional life. “You didn’t put it into
an email? Well, of course I forgot about it.” I routinely
explain that I cannot expect myself to perform
as I had before the accident; I explain it to
strangers, to relatives, to friends. Of
course, my closer friends and business associates know
about my condition already. And so I feel
comfortable expecting more from them, and including
in my mental checklist only those items I can
verify in writing. The rest -- air.
A second benefit of my memory loss has been a
loosening of what had been a fairly tight
regime of mental organization. Whether
I’m writing an essay, or grocery shopping, or in the
middle of a sentence in a conversation, if something
pops into my head that I need to remember, I
write it down immediately. If it’s at all
important. If it’s not important, I bid the notion farewell
and know I’ll never see it again – these become
like people you meet in an elevator, the sort of
people you don’t care if you fart in front of.
That good ideas might be lost – c’est la vie.
If an idea or reminder is important, though, whatever
I happen to be doing at the moment
can be and is dropped in order to accommodate
it. This has been a very liberating pattern of life,
particularly in contrast to my more focused way
of living that preceded this disability. I
recognize my humanity in the middle of all sorts
of activities; and I extract myself from their
exclusivity. No conversation is all-consuming;
no project so imperative that it cannot
occasionally be interrupted by a reminder to
call my landlord or pay a bill. Is my chain of
thought disturbed? Yes – almost hourly.
I am constantly diverted. But as a result, everything
seems more human. I bring more of
myself to tasks than I previously had, because I, with all my
frailties, am contantly present in it.
In the past, I sidelined the rest of me to engage in a
particular task. Now, I’m never quite as
marginalized. Whatever it is that I am writing or doing,
I am more aware that it is I writing or doing
this thing, and that the demands of the task at hand
must necessarily be subordinated to the limits
of my abilities.
This phenomenon, in turn, has led to a greater
intimacy in a wide variety of associations.
I’ve confided in near-strangers that, forgive
me, I don’t have such good short-term memory, I
know you told me this already, but... This
openness is an absolutely new development for me,
and, like the interruption of trains of thought,
humanizes a number of interactions. I do not
pretend as much. I admit my flaws more
openly. I am constantly human in front of even the
most businesslike of businessmen. I work
hard not to be too open -- since I recognize that my
memory loss is a relatively mild condition, the
last thing I want to do is always be angling for
pity. But, unlike before, when I might
try to assume a pose of cool or professionalism or
competence, I am now all-too-human and more fully
engaged on a personal level with someone
who otherwise I might just be selling.
And finally, forgetting. I had never been
much good at forgetting. Someone will tell a
disgusting joke; the image would stay with me.
I’d have a fight with a friend; I’d be moody all
the rest of the day, remembering. Now,
if there is something unpleasant I want to forget, I let it
go. It takes a lot of staying power to
retain anything; a lot of grabbing moments and concepts,
and keeping them in the grip. It’s bliss
to just let.. something.. go, and watch it float away like a
helium balloon in the summer sky. Bad associations,
nasty thoughts, unpleasant memories --
they just disappear. I choose not to remember
a thing, and chances are, it fades away.
On balance, I would prefer to have my memory back.
When I was in law school, I
remember imagining my mind as a kind of sharp
saw, able to cut through difficult problems with
precision and craft rock-solid arguments with
logic. Now, the saw is a bit unstable. You
wouldn’t want to depend on it; you might not
even want to operate it. I miss the days when I
thought that I could understand almost anything,
from the philosophy of quantum mechanics to
assonance in John Clare. But in exchange
for surrendering knowledge, aptitude, and confidence,
I have gained a kind of humanity that some of
us have to be crippled to truly, intuitively learn.
The reality is that even when I was healthy,
I could not solve any problem or understand the
dynamics of every situation. I was limited
then, as now – obviously. Only now, I constantly see
it, feel it, express it, and know it to be true.
I have grown softer, less sharp, more slow – but
the weakening of my confidence has also
clarified my priorities. Maybe I got knocked
too hard on the head. Or maybe it knocked some
sense into me.
Jay Michaelson
July 20, 2001
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